Notices by timorl (timorl@social.wuatek.is)

@chjara Maybe Kill La Kill is a prequel, and that’s why their clothes are… like that.

@freemo @ABScientist https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2024-06-03/ty-article/.premium/trump-is-desperate-for-cash-but-donors-have-conditions/0000018f-df3a-db29-a3ef-ff3a27530000 (paywalled) and https://www.newarab.com/news/pro-israel-mogul-wants-west-bank-annexed-after-trump-donation re-reporting based on the other one.

@freemo @ABScientist Reminder that his pattern from last time includes moving the US embassy to Jerusalem by request of one of his donors. This time, the same donor wants the West Bank annexed. I am pretty sure this will be way worse under Trump.

@HauntedOwlbear

Why is this post friends locked?

Uh, there are two (identical?) versions of this post, and one is but this one isn’t, instructions unclear. x<

@pettter

take out multiple banks and airlines

Critical support to comrade M$. :ablobsalute:

@HauntedOwlbear Ooh, good question. Therapy? is a well executed cover, but I feel Feuerschwanz are doing more with it, and the video is a cherry on top.

@HauntedOwlbear The confusion with police agitators should only be a problem at most initially, if you use them as long as they last, then most of the time they are visibly tarnished in a way that cops wouldn’t be comfortable with. :blobfox3cevil:

@freemo @avlcharlie Well, if one person also cannot own another do we also not have a free market regarding the ownership of resources, and thus real capitalism requires literal slavery?

Or, to be less socratic and more precise about the argument, in the market worker cooperative system all resources (tools, raw materials, outputs) can still be traded between worker cooperatives. The only “resource” that is not tradeable is ownership over the enterprise itself, and if you want to make a case for why this is bad you would have to go beyond “markets allocate resources efficiently” and into why this specific thing should be treated as a tradeable resource (like e.g. people shouldn’t be, which is why the previous paragraph). That is, you have to argue for private ownership of means of production being important into itself, which is why I’m saying this, and not markets, is crucial for capitalism. (I’m not saying at this point there are no arguments you can make for that, just that this is a different thing than just arguing for markets.)

@freemo @avlcharlie There is no reason why anyone couldn’t start a worker cooperative (perhaps a single-person one, if they are able to work by themselves) under that system, so I don’t think this objection quite works.

The one thing you don’t have is people who already have a lot of resources coming in and taking over a company to redirect its efforts, but then you are no longer making an argument in favour of markets, but in favour of exactly private ownership of capital, and how that is good directly (with many underlying assumptions, from the supposed meritocracy of capitalism, to the assumption that the best way of making money from an enterprise is to run it as well as possible). This does not require markets in general, but only the ability to buy an enterprise (not even necessarily at a market). As to how well it works in practice – see Twitter, Toys’R’Us, and the general problems stemming from private equity firms. But maybe I’m getting distracted, I’m mostly trying to point out that capitalism is mostly about this form of ownership and not about markets in general (which, while I don’t trust them, are much more defensible as a system imo).

@freemo @avlcharlie It’s not really restricting it to a group of people, but rather to a form of ownership. Not all forms of ownership are permitted or respected under capitalism either, at least not consistently, except for private ownership of capital.

Could you be more precise what you want out of these market pressures? That is, what market pressure is in your opinion missing or not working in a system in which worker cooperatives are the only way of owning means of production? Because if you want enterprises thriving and falling due to them (the main benefit of a market economy, although I have to again stress that I personally do not think it’s worth the trouble), then this works with worker cooperatives. The only market pressure I can think of that is not present is valuing the company itself, but then the argument comes back to private ownership, because only under that assumption this question even makes sense, so the argument becomes circular

If you define free markets as only systems where you can privately own anything then that’s kinda beyond capitalism – under modern versions of capitalism you cannot privately own e.g. people or the right to use violence. If you define them as systems where specifically means of production have to be privately ownable, then I can agree they are equivalent to capitalism, but then talking about the benefits of free markets is a bait-and-switch.

@freemo @avlcharlie You were talking about capitalism, not just free markets. And I was talking about private ownership of means of production, not ownership in general. In particular, your argument was around the optimizing power of markets (“supply-demand pressures”), which do not require private ownership of means of production to work. It’s a bait-and-switch, which is why I referred to it as capitalist propaganda.

And, correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t think you mean (even though the post would kinda imply it) that free markets require the ability to own anything, right?

@freemo @avlcharlie

All capitalism is is any system which includes free market trade

That’s just incorrect. Capitalism is about the model of ownership, not markets, being able to privately own means of production to be precise. You could have a system in which the only allowed form of ownership of means of production would essentially be a worker cooperative, but these cooperatives sell stuff within a market economy. This would be a form of market socialism, not capitalism.

Just to be clear, I’m not a market socialist myself. Nor do I agree with the premise of this thread, but I’m not in the mood of arguing about that, just correcting a common misconception. Especially since it’s an especially pervasive part of capitalist propaganda – you don’t actually need coercion to have markets, while you need coercion to enforce private ownership, so associating capitalism with the former makes it seem freer than it is.

@AnthonyJK The problem here is that he will likely lose. Pressuring people to vote for Biden can work to an extent, but even a relatively small part of the ~150k not relenting to the pressure (not to mention people who are bothered by this, but didn’t participate in the primary) can swing an election against him, the margins simply aren’t that big. However this is spun, if people around Biden care about winning, they have to be real sweaty right now. @AnarchoNinaWrites

@irenes Oh gods, the posts haven’t federated here, but I can feel the nerds screaming at you that these are definitely not Legolas and Boromir. @quinn

A post reminded me – just yesterday I learned thanks to Wikipedia that the current king of Sweden is the grandson of a high-ranking nazi. Monarchy being Cool and Good™ as always.

@marcel_kolaja

✅Rozpad tradiční rodiny nenastal

:blobfoxsad:

@pettter You could theoretically get noncapitalist colonialism, e.g. if a monarch extracted resources for the monarchy – arguably what Leopold did in the Congo could fall under that, but he was kinda enriching himself personally rather than the institution of monarchy, so I think the possibility remains theoretical.

The difference with empires seems much clearer to me – they usually describe collections of states, rather than single states. There might be a single state at the center of the empire, but the imperial core might consist of multiple states as well. This is a pretty fuzzy category though – I could see the American Empire as having the core in the US and a lot of peripheral countries under it’s (partial) control, or a Western Empire, where the core consists of the US+Europe+Canada+Australia (and perhaps some other’s I forgot), with various degrees of “coreness” for different states. In the first case you could look at Europe as a soft periphery of the American Empire, or as a core of its own European Empire. I think these are lenses for analysis rather than strict descriptions of reality. Oh, and I’m definitely not trying to imply these are the only contemporary empires, just examples.

Just a dump of how I tend to use the term, not sure if that’s in any way a useful answer for you.

@freemo I think I’ve spotted the confusion here. All the terms under the LGBTQ+ umbrella are mostly about personal identity, so what people call themselves and want to be called. This is the context in which “queer” very much makes sense, either for people who haven’t yet figured out the details, but know they don’t fit the cisheteronormative default, or for those who did not end up fitting into any of the other boxes fully (plus some political meaning, but that’s kinda separate).

If you want to be specific and precise when referring to a group then there are almost always better terms – at least in medical, law, and social contexts, I cannot think of any other relevant ones. The specific division you advocate for here is extremely rarely appropriate anyway – you almost always want to refer to a strict subgroup of one of the groups you described, or to a group that encompasses people from both groups.

Having said that, while I can argue that the division you propose is bad on purely practical grounds, I have to also point out that categorizing humans has an extremely fraught history to say it lightly, so ignoring the political implications of any proposed categorization is, in my opinion, extremely unwise.

You seem to be somewhat confused about the gender/sex distinction. In this context “sex” does not refer to just genes, but general biology, including hormones and the phenotype, while gender expression (I have to specify the second part here, since “gender” can, confusingly, refer to at least two other concepts that are very relevant to the discussion, but fortunately not to the distinction here) refers to social indications of gender (behaviour, dress, etc). Thus being intersex is purely about sex, regardless of the specific syndrome. Some people have argued this is a reason why they shouldn’t be included under the LGBTQ+ term at all, but it turns out that their interests politically align with the group often enough that they usually are.

@freemo Ooof, you should be careful with that, LGB is mostly used by transphobes who want to divide the movement. LGBTQ+ (or any of the other commonly used acronyms) are in a non-insignificant way a descriptor of a political movement/group that has shared political interests, it’s not a coincidence that a lot of the activism was done by all these people together, that they have common symbols etc. Other than the political connection there is also the fact that gender and sexual attraction are pretty strongly connected for most people, so it even makes sense to lump them together from a purely categorization perspective.

If you dislike the acronym then “gender and sexual minorities” is a pretty neutral way of referring to the group, although if you try to split them it gets blurry. I personally like “queer” as a descriptor, but it cannot be used for the whole group, since some members find it offensive.

Oh, and being intersex isn’t in any way about gender expression, and being trans and being a crossdresser are about gender expression in quite different ways.

@ryanc Wait, Poland?! You got to literally sue your parents to change your documents there…